 🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 339: 03.18.2021 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 7. I feel like I'm going to be saying this quite a bit throughout this journey, but this might be the worst Cage movie I've watched yet. The difficult part here is discerning between the "so bad, it's good" and the "so bad... yeah, it's just SO bad." This is tricky terrain, but some that I've traversed quite a bit over the years, and more so recently (especially with this project). That being said, this one through me for a loop. Starring Vinnie Chase from Entourage, a guy who I've never heard of as Vinnie Chase from Entourage's deadbeat brother, John Cusack as maybe a cop? (more on this later), and Cage in the somewhat limited, but totally insane villain role, the one thing that perhaps sums up the ride I just endured is that this movie–set prominently with characters from Biloxi, Mississippi, and filmed on location–does not feature a single actor attempting a regional accent. |
Vinnie Chase, who–god love him–is just one of the worst, emotionless actors I've ever seen–opens this with a voiceover as he stares seriously at the water, holding a gun...
The movie begins in earnest with Vinnie and his older bro as children, running amok in Biloxi and living with their uncle who blows his head off one day. Right from the get go, we're tuned into the main vibe of this thing: that it will be bad (duh) but also just insanely, over-the-top violent. Some of these scenes are interesting, I suppose (stay tuned for the bonkers slow-motion CG-bullets and CG-fists!), but it's, more often than not, completely unearned and fairly nauseating...
We are introduced to a younger Nicolas Cage as the kinda small-time Biloxi mobster Eddie King during this flashback intro. Don't worry, he looks exactly the same when the movie flash-forwards 23 years! And boy oh boy, does he look weird. Sporting a phenomenally bad wig and nose prosthetic, he's doing a vague, completely inconsistent accent that definitely doesn't scream "gulf states USA"...
I find Cage's voice work fascinating. In our last entry–a biopic, Chapter 6–he went big, portraying a real guy and was, to my ears, way off. And then you have the Boston suburbs set and current reigning champ for worst Cage flick so far, 211 (Chapter 2). In that one, Cage is the only actor not attempting a Boston accent. There are countless other films where's he doing proper if not notable accents, mostly from earlier in his career. It seems, at least thus far, in this endless barrage of 2010s work, that he either just talks like himself regardless of the role, or does a wacky voice that is completely distracting. Luckily here, nothing is more distracting than that wig and nose! Wait, did I write "luckily"? Lucky for who? Certainly not me. I digresss...
If you thought I was being too harsh on Vinnie Chase's acting abilities, I submit to you the following scene. Vinnie is all growns up and successful–his older brother having sheltered him and saved him from a life of crime–and he owns some kind of construction company who have a no texting policy...
Not great, Bob! The look and flow of this is just complete trash all the way around. You'd have to have the worst taste to think at any moment you were watching a competent production. The plot is ever-changing and mostly irrelevant. But part of this series of reviews is that I do the plot recap, so I keep going, even if everything in my body is telling me to stop...
Vinnie's older bro gets out of prison for the nth time, vows to finally make good and hits up his lil bro for a 10k loan so he can buy his teen daughter braces. He immediately buys 10k worth of cocaine instead. Friend of the family, John Cusack–who looks like this the entire movie, perhaps in an attempt to symbolically remove himself from any connection to it...
–shows up to tell Vinnie that he's worried about his big bro. And he should be! Because after they go to a minor league baseball game (they are really into minor league baseball, also), he is immediately robbed of the 10k worth of cocaine as Vinnie gets into the bathtub with his jeans on (why?)...
It's not my intention to pile on Vinnie Chase's acting abilities, but I would not be doing my job (my job?) if I didn't share this soliloquy...
He just can't quit this no-good brother of his!
It's not till over thirty minutes later when Cage returns, running into Vinnie's brother at a bar. To my ears, the accent has changed slightly, but the spirit and delivery have not...
This sets in motion the main "plot" of the movie, which is that Cage kidnaps Vinnie Chase's brother to get ransom cash from Vinnie only the brother is also in on the kidnapping... or is he? (he's not; don't worry about it; who cares). They're asking for $350,000 which is an amount of money. However, this amount becomes, for no discernible reason later in the movie, only $200,000. This is what we're dealing with, folks. This is the good shit.
Cut to Vinnie and Cusack going to see some junkie/undercover cop who they give drugs to in exchange for some information. This whole subplot is comically undercooked. Anyway, some other stuff happens including a long, boring chase sequence, and then they see the junkie cop again–another A+ actor–who spells out what he believes is going on (completely negating the necessity of the previous chase sandwiched between these scenes but lol)...
After another maybe fifteen minutes of no screen time, Cage returns and thankfully sticks around for most of the rest of the film. He is the saving grace. They introduce a new character, Cage's older brother, whom he immediately proceeds to murder by beating to death! It's just an all-around amazing five minutes of film history, condensed slightly for you here...
Then we discover that the kidnapping was real all along and, welp, Vinnie's brother is in bad shape...
There is just so much gratuitous violence and bad slow-motion editing...
Then we get what I think is my favorite moment of the movie: Vinnie Chase's business manager can't come up with the 350K because he has sneakily tied up that cash in order to... wait for it... secretly flip a house! He actually says the words "fixer-upper"...
Of all the stupid things! Well... then Cage reads a letter he wrote to his dead brother (whom, let me remind you, he has a mere hours earlier brutally murdered). Imagine being tasked to read this level of writing and giving this performance of it. Imagine...
Simply put, that is why I am doing this project. The last half-hour of this is just over-the-top stupid, bonkers ultra violence, horrible plotting/pacing, shitty CG-'enhanced' action, and really really bad acting. The funny thing is, it feels like one of the fake movies Vinnie Chase would have fake-acted in on an episode of Entourage. I'm pretty sure some of this, from the Wikipedia plot synopsis, is just full-on inaccurate.
“Eddie lets JP (Vinnie Chase) know that he killed his own brother so that his threat to kill Mikey (Vinnie Chase's brother) is real. Mikey tries to escape and is beaten up yet again. Eddies henchmen kidnap Mikey’s daughter Alexis to ensure that exchange goes ahead. JP agrees to meet up with Eddie and pay $200,000. Mikey goes to the Arcade to rescue his brother, and then, with his brother safe, goes to the meeting with Eddie, but at the money exchange the money bag explodes. Eddie and his henchmen are killed after a bloody long shootout.But honestly I don't fucking know anymore. The only thing I know is that it definitely doesn't matter. It was way too easy to tune-out during all the violence and shitty acting. Mea culpa! So please accept this series of
Somehow, in less than 24 hours, the business associate comes up with the cash (either 350K or 200K, don't–I repeat, do not worry about it) by.... pulling an insurance fraud.... no, suing some.... no, wearing a neck brace (?!?!)....
Cage pulls out the Draino to tell the Draino stroy...
Cage and Vinnie Chase have a nice lunch together where Cage acts totally normal...
The way Vinnie Chase says his character's own first name here on a voice message to his niece lol...
Vinnie Chase's brother's ex-wife OD's on drugs (because her daughter, the neice has been kidnapped; again: don't worry about it) and so he decides to take down Cage because of Hurricane Katrina. And, AND, even though John Cusack is supposed to be an active duty cop, he never intervenes with, you know, the cops aiding with this totally real, uh, crime, even when he's presented with information like this (as Vinnie Chase holds up an insanely bad photoshopped picture of him and his brother as kids)...
I forgot to mention that a lot of this takes place in the back of an arcade. Yes, more than twenty years later, the same plastic hangs on the walls of the back of this place. This renovation is taking forever!
Anyway, Vinnie and his brother kill all the bad guys including Cage fairly quickly (this is the entire final battle scene, clocking in at a bit over two minutes). It's mostly an excuse to showcase the aforementioned CGI, mostly of bullets hitting people in the dick and heads exploding...
Then it mercifully ends. It was a baseball movie all along, people...
In closing, this was a direct-to-VOD 2017 action film in which Nicolas Cage wears a really bad wig and giant fake nose that made $40,000 in revenue against a 10-million dollar budget and has a 3% Rotten Tomatoes rating. And I watched it. God bless america.
THE VERDICT: 4 CAGES OUT OF 10 • CLICK HERE for all 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 Chapters + Ongoing Rankings.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 338 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 340A ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 338 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 340A ⫸
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